Stealth player is poised to win a CRISPR patent that could speed the development of therapies

The usual suspects have done a fine job of turning the CRISPR patent landscape into a minefield for companies trying to figure out what intellectual property they need to make their hoped-for therapies, but an unusual suspect is about to mix things up even more.

The MilliporeSigma subsidiary of Germany-based pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA will soon receive a patent on an invention that increases CRISPR’s efficiency and decreases its off-target effects, according to documents posted this month by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Both attributes could be extremely useful to would-be developers of treatments based on the genome-editing tool.

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